


Patriots & Tyrants

by Terra



Category: Twilight - Meyer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:59:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terra/pseuds/Terra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>c. 1776. "Blood is the only sea from which liberty can rise. Did Romulus not slay his brother for the good of Rome?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patriots & Tyrants

He is a Massachusetts fellow, so he never did hear Patrick Henry stomp up a storm in the House of Burgesses down south. They say that he was a riot of a man, his ruddy countenance stained with passions, crying like a wild thing. Garrett reads about it in the papers. He has only had bibles before.

\---

In coffee shops and taverns he makes his orations. Anna says he is as Cicero, reborn; but what does a lady know of freedom? The glasses clink on the table, filled to the brim with thin New England beer. "It is inevitable that we take to arms," he says. "Blood is the only sea from which liberty can rise. Did Romulus not slay his brother for the good of Rome?"

"You quote Machiavel," a patron calls. "The instructor of tyrants."

"I'd rather quote a tyrant than serve him."

"That may be so, but what hope have we against the tide of the British empire? Me, a cobbler, and you a silversmith's apprentice?"

Garrett volunteers for the artillery company the next day. He brings his father's rifle and his best frock coat. The weight of it feels exact on his shoulders, almost as though he could put a number to it.

\---

Gunpowder stings his throat with sweetness, like an arc of maple on his tongue. In the dank and crowded woods the other men appear as spectres. This is their city on a hill and all, but Providence sometimes needs a helping hand. Garrett is always the first on the field, and he rises from his sleep earlier than the worms.

One of those mornings the pale thing comes for him, it rips out his heart surer than King George ever could.

\---

There is red all around him, and pain white hot as a forge. It twists him into new silver shapes, into a demon on the wind. The tree of liberty thirsts for the blood of both patriots and tyrants, and that has always been the way of it.


End file.
